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I feel bad this is how the journey ended for Neeva. I will say the big challenge for any competitor to Google from my point of view is that nobody else has as c

I feel bad this is how the journey ended for Neeva. I will say the big challenge for any competitor to Google from my point of view is that nobody else has as compelling of a search-based news product, and likewise the size of Google’s moat from Google Books is going to be a massive lift for any company to compete with. I am a special case because I do a lot of research. Not having anything close to Google Books has made nearly every search engine that’s not Google a nonstarter for me. And it’s not hard to see how other search engines could compete with that—work closely with the Internet Archive to put a really strong front end on that. But Google put the hard work into winning the long-running legal battle to keep that thing alive, and the result is that they now get to benefit from its stickiness for decades to come. But credit where credit’s due. Google built a good moat, one so good that even people who stay abreast of alternative search engines can struggle to leave its clutches.

whimsicalism 3y ago
If you saying that Google books is a major factor/contributor in driving traffic to Google vs. other engines (ie. moat), I disagree. I doubt that this is a factor at all to the typical monetizable user.
- shortformblog 3y ago
  Well, you can disagree all you want, but the truth is, factors like these help make Google feel more complete to people doing their searches. It’s an inertia play. Google put the hard work into a large chunk of the literary output of the English language. No other search engine has this. If the goal of a search engine is to be the best at what it does, having hundreds of years of books and magazines is an excellent way to do it. These books, and the riches they carry, inevitably lead writers like myself to link back to Google, which creates a feedback loop for content that is directly valuable to Google, because it pulls users back to the search engine. I’m sorry you have such a limited view of Google’s best resource.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I doubt that this is a factor at all to the typical monetizable user. reply The typical monetizable user, insofar as they exist, is what Google captures by default placement (whether what they purchase, or just from dominating the desktop browser space). Features are how they remain sticky for various subgroups of atypical monetizable users.

whimsicalism 3y ago

If you saying that Google books is a major factor/contributor in driving traffic to Google vs. other engines (ie. moat), I disagree. I doubt that this is a factor at all to the typical monetizable user.

shortformblog 3y ago
Well, you can disagree all you want, but the truth is, factors like these help make Google feel more complete to people doing their searches. It’s an inertia play. Google put the hard work into a large chunk of the literary output of the English language. No other search engine has this. If the goal of a search engine is to be the best at what it does, having hundreds of years of books and magazines is an excellent way to do it. These books, and the riches they carry, inevitably lead writers like myself to link back to Google, which creates a feedback loop for content that is directly valuable to Google, because it pulls users back to the search engine. I’m sorry you have such a limited view of Google’s best resource.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> I doubt that this is a factor at all to the typical monetizable user. reply The typical monetizable user, insofar as they exist, is what Google captures by default placement (whether what they purchase, or just from dominating the desktop browser space). Features are how they remain sticky for various subgroups of atypical monetizable users.